RE: No to SQL? Anti-database movement gains steam

I actually know a three or four folks who are currently building large web/compute applications for their individual startups, and they *all* are using one of these non-sql data storage platforms like CouchDB, etc. The big feedback from them as to why those as opposed to Oracle/SQL Server/MySQL is:

• Performance/Scale-out - they all need very high performance, and they need it in a cheap footprint. That is, it's simply not an option to buy bigger hardware, so they need something that scales-out. RAC could obviously do that but that brings us to:
• Cost - so much of their business is data-driven, they can't afford to be spending millions and millions of dollars on Oracle, and the other scale-out options stink, as far as they're concerned
• Special functionality, like MapReduce - Integrated support for summation via MapReduce is a useful piece of functionality, or the ability to selectively replicate objects based on various criteria, or the ability to turn on and off consistency between nodes ,etc.

I think there's always going to be a place for SQL-based databases, but there's definitely a strong push among small companies with heavy data processing requirements to not use a traditional database. And I've just started hearing rumblings from some of my large enterprise customers about using these types of solutions for some of their analytics workloads.

Matt

-----Original Message-----
From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org on behalf of Jared Still Sent: Thu 7/2/2009 4:21 PM
To: sunil.kanderi_at_gmail.com
Cc: Oracle-L_at_freelists.org
Subject: Re: No to SQL? Anti-database movement gains steam  

Jared Still
Certifiable Oracle DBA and Part Time Perl Evangelist

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 11:47 AM, Sunil Kanderi <sunil.kanderi_at_gmail.com> wrote:

        http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9135086

        Interesting article in ComputerWorld about the NoSQL movement. Most of my DBA experience has been primarily related to large ERP applications and recently had to start supporting Java         

Best quote:

"It's true that [NoSQL] aren't relevant right now to mainstream enterprises," Oskarsson said, "but that might change one to two years down the line."

Uh-huh.

I think that's been said about COBOL as well.

Wait, my boss (years ago) said the same thing about unix and linux.

Another telling quote: "SQL is an awkward fit for procedural code, and almost all code is procedural," said Curt Monash, an independent database analyst and blogger.

Of course something like that would come from Monash.

First you have people saying the RDBMS is a bad fit for object code. Then another says it's a bad fit for procedural code.

This seems to be the result of very short term thinking.

"I want my app today!"

Such short term thinking can easily lead to long term failure.

I saw it just this week in a newly failed project.

But, it failed on time.

Jared

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